Quotes About Films

Actually, I can't stand watching violent scenes in films; I avoid watching horror films. I don't tend to watch action films mainly because I find them boring, but I watch the films of David Cronenberg and Martin Scorsese, usually in a state close to having a heart attack. I'm a complete coward. I make violent films as a result of my sensitivity to violence - in other words, my fear of violence.

The films that have influenced me and the films that have motivated me and inspired me were films that resonated, films that made me think after I saw them.

I'm interested in seeing films that confront me with new things, with films that make me question myself, with films that help me to reflect on subjects that I hadn't thought about before, films that help me progress and advance.

Many people are under the delusion that I'm just a special-effects man, but I've worn many different hats in my day. On every film I've been involved in, I worked with the writer and producer. We really formulated those scripts. We tried to make films that were logical but still had the fantasy feel of it. I enjoy Aardman Animation's films with Wallace and Gromit, but they're obvious puppet films, whereas we tried to disguise it and make our effects characters in the films rather than obvious puppets.

There are two types of films - one made by the big-time producers, the other is low budget stuff made by some producers who make films for the heck of it, they complete their films for small amounts, sell it at low costs with almost no publicity.

I was 13 when I first saw my mum's films. There were these boys who said to me, 'Your mum makes sexy films,' and I said, 'She doesn't.' Then I watched them and my mum makes sexy films! I'm a huge fan of my mum.

Once the script is done, I put it aside for a month. I start thinking of all the films that have influenced me, which I have liked for different reasons, and not necessarily the look, but films that have moved me. Some very strange films came to mind.

I want to make films that are political and social. Films with a message or an idea. Films that dare to ask.

What I want to do is make films that astonish people, that astound people, and I hope you want to do that too. It's easy to make money. It's easy to make films like everybody else. But to make films that explode like grenades in people's heads and leave shrapnel for the rest of their lives is a very important thing. That's what the great filmmakers did for me. I've got images from Fellini, from Bergman, from Kurowsawa, from Bunuel, all stuck in my brain.

I built up a knowledge of 1960s and '70s British films because my dad used to work nights, and I'd sit up with my mum and watch films - 'How I Won the War' and the films of Richard Lester, Karel Reisz and John Schlesinger.

I like to see people put themselves into films, which is part of the reason why I love Woody Allen films so much - I believe his actors' work. I have a feeling that many actors in his films are similar to their characters, and I like that.

I am a cynical optimist. Big opening weekends are like cotton candy. The films you will remember over time are the films that stick in the consciousness of the audience in a good way.

My films ought to be judged on whether they're entertaining or good as films, but not on the political view necessarily. I'm trying to be morally responsible and no more. I don't have an agenda I'm trying to push.

I don't rehearse films as much as opera or theatre. When I began directing films I thought a long rehearsal was a good idea. Experience showed me that the best performance was often left in a rehearsal room.

If, you know, all your life you're making films or whatever, and somehow along the way you lose meaning in whatever you're doing when you're making the films, they're just not the same as they used to be to you. That doesn't mean your life is over; it just means maybe go try to live a different life.

Being part of 'Natural Nylon' is a great way to have an influence on the films that get out there. I love films and it gives me an input.

To me some of the funniest movies would be probably categorized in the dramatic genre, and likewise some of the most dramatic films, or films that have the most dramatic moments, are in comedies.

London exists normally in a state of bleach bypass. There's the artistic context of "Blow Up" and "Performance" and all the Sixties and Seventies British films that I grew up on, because I did very much grow up on British films.

Like most filmmakers and writers, there are roots in my own life, but they are stories that I invent. There was a period of time in my life when I made directly autobiographical films where I truly told what happened to me. But, now, I don't make directly autobiographical films anymore. I am more for renouncing that and being in front of history. The large part of my work tells about something I know. It's close.

I have to tell everyone that when I finish a film and it goes out and is released, I never look at my films again. I don't like looking back. I don't even like talking about 'em! So I'm really digging back in my memory because I don't like to sit and look at my films again.

We try to make films for people [that are] the films that we'd like to see. They're not easy to get made. They're hard to get made. You have to keep the budget low to get them made. But at the end of the day, I don't really worry about competition, because I don't really think of it that way. I don't feel like I'm in a race with anybody.

The 'human situation,' in all its guises, is what good films are all about, and technical skill counts for nothing if it is used only to manufacture films which have little to do with humanity.

I just don't think I'm special because I'm an actor and I never would. Of course I take what I do seriously because I love doing it, and I love being in films and making films, but I don't take myself seriously.

Films today show only a dream world and have lost touch with the way people really are... In this country, people die at 21. They die emotionally at 21, maybe younger... My responsibility as an artist is to help people get past 21... The films are a roadmap through emotional and intellectual terrain that provides a solution on how to save pain.

Horror films and genre films are interesting, because I always look for a deeper meaning or a deeper theme in the film.

I'm looking at some comedic horror films because I have often been accused of being too dark. I'm not dark, not compared with 'Saw' or anything like that. So I'm looking at live-action horror films, but not slasher ones - ones that have humor and maybe some social satire.

It's a fact, the majority of films in Hollywood are from the male perspective. And the female characters, very rarely do they get to speak to another female character in a movie, and when they do it's usually about a guy, not anything else. So they're very male-centric, Hollywood films, in general. So I think it's incredible that Ned Benson, when I said I'd love to know where she goes, says okay, I'm going to write another film from the female perspective.

There is this thing called Actors Access, which is run by the breakdown services. What they do is they put up casting notices that are available to everyone. Because there's thousands and thousands of actors and there are student films and grad student films and, sometimes, some small independent projects that are on there.

I've been on lots of film sets. I've produced films and written films and been around, so it wasn't my first rodeo in terms of that stuff. Nothing particularly surprised me, I have to say. I came in and I enjoyed the first day and I enjoyed the last day.

I'm a living example of getting into films backwards. Merely by accident. Exposure to films and ideas is the best thing that colleges can do.

I think that, back in the day, there used to be a lot of horror films that kind of had a checklist of what went into making the 'perfect horror film', and I think now people are raising the bar in the industry, as far as the types of horror films that are being made.

I have fun making films. I love making films. It's the only thing I know how to do. And I do it well.

I'd rather do theater and British films than move to L.A. in hopes of getting small roles in American films.

I have always been really picky about the films that I make, because I think that there's such an incredible opportunity to bring up questions when you're making movies, and some of my favorite films bring up big questions. They are movies that, when you walk away from it, it hits you as something deeper, and it's a great, fun way to be able to bounce around some of these harder concepts in our heads.

I do believe there's been a lull of slasher films. There have been a few that I guess would fall under the genre of slasher. Like You're Next, which I thought was fun. There have been a few really good slasher films, but for the most part, that's sort of died away at the moment.

The films I liked were European films - Federico Fellini, Michelangelo Antonioni, François Truffaut.

I suppose it's nice that I've made films that some people have heard of and respect. That's great. And it's certainly helpful in some regards, but they're really tough economic prospects. They always have been, and that's not necessarily getting any better. And not just the films, but it's also been a rough 10 years for that independent film market. And so I have stumbled onto this point in the timeline where the kind of stuff that I'm trying to do is not... it was a lot easier to know what to do with it 20 years ago.

I tend not to think that anything I happen to be reporting on in my films is special. Meaning that people are always saying to me, 'you must love New York, you have it in all your films.' But mostly it's because I know New York, and I know Brooklyn at this time. I know the lives there, because I have lived in them.

I want to make good films; I don't want to make films for the moment.

I teach at USC. I have a big class of 360 kids, only about a fifth of whom are film majors. I don't just show the Hollywood blockbusters. I show independent films, foreign films, documentaries.

In France, it is television that pays for films to be made and I received all of my funding from TV: two television channels, government funding and distributor contribution (Wild Bunch). My films are low-budget, and not expensive [to make].

There's good art and there's bad art. A lot of action films are bad art, but Paul Greengrass showed us with the Bourne films that it's possible to make an action film with a political, social conscience.

I think movie makers in every country are looking for ideas. It's interactive. And sometimes we remake a lot of Hollywood films but we don't buy the rights, we just try to imitate those films.

I learn so much from watching films like that with commentary and then when you get to hear another filmmaker talk about their films it's a really great experience.

I have made 70 or so films. In all my films not a single actor, a single extra, was hurt. Not one. So statistics are on my side when I say I'm clinically sane.

I think comedy is a bit more international than people credit. I happily watch lots of American shows and American comedy films. If I did a list of the top 10 comedy films in Britain, there's no sense that it would probably be different than yours.

There are many things that have stayed consistent. But the biggest change, of course, is technology, the way it's used, the way films are shot, the format that they're shot in, and the way films, of course, are edited. It's very different than it was in the past.

I've liked most of the films that I've been in and those are the kinds of films I like to see.